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Pastimes : John Dessauer's Investors World -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe Jayne who wrote (1689)	10/17/1998 8:52:00 PM
From: Ralph C. Cinque	Respond to of 2346

Well Joe, everyone is entitled to make mistakes, but no investment advisor is entitled to as many utter investment disasters as Dessauer has had, such as Service, Monaco, Singer, Fletcher, Comshare, and Pokphand, especially since he encouraged more and more fresh buying as these stocks were heading towards oblivion. You mentioned HLT? You want to give him credit for that? Not long ago he was pushing it at 33 and now it's 17. He highlighted it in the August issue at 26, saying it would be the next Santander, saying it was cheap, saying on the hotline that some mutual fund manager foolishly dumped it at 26 and that we should take advantage of his stupidity. And what about BFT? Granted, he was correct to urge people to hold on to it when it was spunoff from Bally, but just recently he was pushing people to buy it at 31, and now it's 15. I remember recently he put out a real strong buy order on the hotline at 23. "If you've been waiting, this is your entry point", he said. What about LSI, which he has been pushing as a buy since it was 32, and continued pushing all the way down to 19, and now recently it collapsed to 11. What about CD, recommended just months ago at 24 and now down to 10, with plenty of buy recommendations in between because it was so "cheap." Joe, if you have managed to sidestep the numerous losers in his portfolio and pick out the winners, then I applaud you. You obviously have an uncanny intution that I and others lack. I credit you, not him. But believe me, people have been hurt. I have been reading the Investor's World Message Board on Yahoo, and there are terrible stories of people being ruined, retirements being cancelled, nest eggs up in smoke, thanks to that Pied Piper from Cape Cod. He doesn't give a shit. And he doesn't even learn from his mistakes. He's just as rash and brazen and self-confident as ever, spewing out his misguided advice. I say put the quixotic fool out of business before he ruins more lives.

To: Joe Jayne who wrote (1689)	10/17/1998 9:34:00 PM
From: Wren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2346

Some thoughts on responsibility! "I feel its up to each of us to be responsible for our own investments" I have also made money with a lot of JD's recommendations. However, I think there is a legitimate complaint about the way JD has, both in the newsletter and on the hot line, pushed the subscribers to continue to buy stocks like CPPKY, CD, FFS, SME, and others as their stocks sank in value. I question whether he has been doing adequate follow-up on stocks on his list. He talks with management, but does he constantly visit locations, review financial filings and all news releases, talk to customers, etc. For example, I had some SME and sold it a long time before he recommended because I went to local SME store and decided its method of operation of having a customer fill out a written order, stand in line to turn the order in and pay, then go stand in another line to wait for the merchandise be sent to the pickup area from the warehouse area, was inefficient and unappealing. I believe that most investors who visited a SME store would come to the same conclusion. If all you expect from a newsletter is some suggestions of some stocks that might be good buys, you don't have to pay for that. There are plenty of good free sources for ideas, and plenty of sources of research. I see some posts saying you shouldn't expect so much for $199. I think when 80,000+ subscribers are paying, they are entitled to good consistent follow-up reports on all the recommendations and the advisor is responsible to do that to earn his money. If a newsletter guru does a good job, his subscribers will stay and he will get more. If he is not doing a good job, he will lose a lot of them. Look at the Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation in the October newsletter. JD is losing a lot of subscribers.

To: Joe Jayne who wrote (1689)	10/18/1998 8:10:00 AM
From: Ralph C. Cinque	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2346

Joe, You mentioned BFT as one of his winners. Let's look at it. But first I want to concur with Wren that I too sold SME before Dessauer advised doing so precisely because I went in to my local Service Merchandise and saw that the floors were dirty, the merchandise shoddy-looking, and the number of customers paltry considering that it was the holidays, and so I sold it. Like George Bush who never entered supermarkets, I doubt that Dessauer went into Service Merchandise. But I digress. Back to BFT. Again, this was a spinoff from Bally, and I credit Dessauer for advising holding it. But this stock went from 12 to 37 in less than a year. That's more than a triple in less than a year, and all on expectations. It was losing money throughout most of that time, and just barely posted a profit in the last quarter (a profit that was questioned by some because of accounting irregularities). This is the only publicly-traded gym stock there is, and I think a lot of brokerage houses were pushing it just for the lack of an alternative in that industry. Now, you know that a triple in less than a year all on expectations is not a normal thing to happen, and I should think that selling half your holdings would have beeen a prudent thing to do. (I didn't own this one, but I was paying attention to it, and caution flags were going up all over the place for me) But let's say that wasn't Dessauer's investment style. Fine. But to encourage fresh buying when it was well above 30 all because "it was heading to 60", I thought that was absolutely insane. And Dessauer has done that, time and time again. He recommended fresh buying of Comshare at 29 (now it's 3, I think). He first recommended Core Labs (CLB) in the high 20s when it had risen from 12 in less than a year, and he even admitted that it was selling for a ridiculous P/E, but that "the total capitalization of the company was only 500 million". Well big deal, that's no way to determine the value of a company. It eventually fell all the way back down to 12, although recently it is back up to 17 or 18. Actually, I don't doubt that it's a good company, but it was way overpriced in the high 20s, and Dessauer should have known that. I'm telling you, if Dessauer ever had it (good investment sense), he's lost it, and we would all be wise to dismiss him.